Journaling yesterday. Blogging (in the “receptacle”) today. We are all in the same boat.

Posted on by Live & Learn

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Growing old is certainly far easier for people like me who have no job from which to retire at a given age. I can’t stop doing what I have always done, trying to sort out and shape experience. The journal is a good way to do this at a less intense level than by creating a work of art as highly organized as a poem, for instance, or the sustained effort a novel requires. I find it wonderful to have a receptacle into which to pour vivid momentary insights, and a way of ordering day-to-day experience (as opposed to Maslow’s “peak experiences,” which would require poetry). If there is an art to the keeping of a journal intended for publication yet at the same time a very personal record, it may be in what E. Bowen said: “One must regard oneself impersonally as an instrument.”

~ May Sarton, The House by the Sea (1977)

(Robert) Coles himself says elsewhere in the piece, “Not everyone can or will do that— give his specific fears and desires a chance to be of universal significance.” To do this takes a curious combination of humility, excruciating honesty, and (there’s the rub) a sense of destiny or of identity. One must believe that private dilemmas are, if deeply examined, universal, and so, if expressed, have a human value beyond the private, and one must also believe in the vehicle for expressing them, in the talent.

[…]

But I believe we learn through the experiences of others as well as through our own, constantly meditating upon them, drawing the sustenance of human truth from them, and it seems natural to me to wish to share these aperçus, these questions, these oddities, these dilemmas and pangs. Why? Partly, I suppose, because the more one is a receptacle of human destinies, as I have become through my readers, the more one realizes how very few people could be called happy, how complex and demanding every deep human relationship is, how much real pain, anger, and despair are concealed by most people. And this is because many feel their own suffering is unique. It is comforting to know that we are all in the same boat.

~ May Sarton, Journal of a Solitude (1973)

Notes:

22 thoughts on “Journaling yesterday. Blogging (in the “receptacle”) today. We are all in the same boat.”

  1. it does make us feel better to find that we are not alone in the lifeboat. to see it in print is to make it real. to be the one to put it into print is to bail a bucket of water out of that lifeboat.

  2. “We are all in the same boat.” Easy to lose sight of these days with so much manipulation of reality: people ‘curating’ their lives via their social media streams, editors Photoshopping images of women to such a degree that a ‘realistic’ body image is difficult to hold onto, and on and on. So many things to consider here on the cusp of a new year with its promise of the opportunity to live a more authentic life….

    1. Yes, hard to disagree that the skeptical eye is watching 24×7 – I choose to move away quickly from what I see and read that it too hard to believe. It’s sad, but that’s where I’m at.

  3. How did you know I needed exactly these words this morning, Dave? Combing through the typesetter’s proof of my first book this morning, nervous, questioning, worried it’s not good enough, tired of reading it for the 100th time. But if you asked me why I wrote it in the first place, it’s because “many feel their own suffering is unique. It is comforting to know that we are all in the same boat.” Reducing that suffering in ourselves and others is where we find our purpose (Bowen’s impersonal instrument). Thank you for the motivation.

  6. I prefer Orson Wells’ perspective, “We’re born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we’re not alone.”
    Alone is a funny word. It can mean, solitary; by one’s self; on one’s own. To say we are in the same boat is a bit of a stretch. Blogging seems to be such a solitary task; a “like” or a “comment” sparks the illusion that we are all in boats, only they float about separately and only occasionally bump into each other.

    1. I’m nodding my head agreeing with all including the Well’s perspective (as an introvert) yet I feel even the solitary nature of blogging and its likes and comments and their illusion are wired to a human on the other side, however thinly connected.

  7. humans are complex and intricate as 2 dozen overlapping gossamer webs. yet the same foundation pattern exists for each web; we are different. we are similiar. Its in most of our natures to want to interconnect. Sometimes, its not what one sees – but how one sees it.

  8. “How much real pain, anger, and despair are concealed by most people.” This is so true, and simply because people believe there is separation. The gift is to realise we are connected to everyone and everything.

  10. we want so much to conceal, pain, anger, sorrow, our imperfections and we create illusions to show how much better off we are than others. in doing that, we create separation, which doesn’t satisfy our craving, our desire for affirmation. when we allow ourselves to connect with others, to recognize we are all the same, it is comforting. Unfortunately, it is temporary as fear recycles itself and the whole process starts over again.

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